PDF Templates

The PDF Template Editor is a powerful tool that allows users to create customizable, fillable PDF templates. With this feature, you can create forms, reports and other structured documents by adding dynamic data fields that can be programmatically populated for any number of app users.

The PDF documents can also be created starting from a user-updated base document. This feature is ideal for digitizing and automating existing forms that require a specific standardized format.

Creating a template

The Template Editor is accessed from the "Template Editing" button on the left of the toolbar.

It will open on the right of the screen in place of the UI Editor.

If there are no templates in the app yet, the editor opens with the template creation dialog, where you can pick a name and format.

The template is initially empty. You can add a page by clicking on the ➕ icon under the template name.

Adding Fields

Once the template has at least one page, you can add fields using the Add Text Variable and Add Image Variable buttons in the editor.

Image variables

Image variables allow you to add image inputs (for example from a photo widget or a signature) as fields in the template.

Filling the template

Once you create a template, a new instance is created as well in the Function panel, under Template > PDF Templates > [Template Name] . This instance contais the Fill Templatefunction.

A simple example of a fillTemplate function

Filling an existing PDF

After adding at least one page to the template, drag a file from the Media Server onto it.

Then, add the fields and drag them to the desired location on the form.

In the example below, the app collects the input data from a form and uses it to fill the template. The result is the uploaded document, fully filled with the new user data.

The output of the fillTemplate function is a Base64 encoded document.

It can be dragged onto a Media View widget to display the most up to date version, or it can be sent as an attachment in an e-mail.

It's important to note that each output of a fillTemplate function is a separate document isolated for each user, and all fields are completely overwritten when the function runs.

You can include multiple different forms, signatures, photos and other documents in a PDF template, but the whole form has to be filled at once. One way to mix different types of input is to load all the data into a table in the Internal PostgreSQL database.